What was the London telephone exchange?
Located at the foot of The Shard in London Bridge near Borough Market, The Telephone Exchange is a lively bar with a quirky retro vibe, just a stone’s throw from London Bridge station.
How many telephone exchanges are there in the UK?
5600 telephone exchanges
There are nearly 5600 telephone exchanges in the UK. This page allows you to find your exchange.
What is a telephone exchange UK?

The public telephone exchange Your office is connected to a local exchange via a copper or fibre-optic line, depending on what type of line is available. In basic terms, this is how your phone call travels from your telephone to your receiver’s telephone.
What’s the meaning of telephone exchange?
Definition of telephone exchange : a central office in which the wires of telephones may be connected to permit conversation.
How did telephone exchanges work?
A telephone exchange automatically senses an off-hook condition of the telephone when the user removes the handset from the switchhook or cradle. The exchange provides dial tone at that time to indicate to the user that the exchange is ready to receive dialed digits.

When was the telephone principle introduced?
When was the telephone patented? On February 14, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell applied for a U.S. patent for the telephone. On March 7, 1876, Bell was awarded U.S. patent 174,465.
Will telephone exchanges disappear?
After all, we’ve all grown up with telephones and as such, they’re part of the furniture. But in December 2025, telephony in the UK will change forever. Openreach – the infrastructure division of BT – will retire the old copper lines that have been at the heart of the UK’s telephony for decades.
How many Openreach exchanges are there in the UK?
5,600 exchanges
At present Openreach has around 5,600 exchanges but only c. 1,000 of these exchanges – so-called Openreach Handover Points (OHPs) – are used to provide nationwide coverage of modern “fibre broadband” based services (FTTC, FTTP and G. fast).
What are the types of telephone exchange?
There are two major types in the Public switched telephone network (PSTN), the Class 4 telephone switches designed for toll or switch-to-switch connections, and the Class 5 telephone switches or subscriber switches, which manage connections from subscriber telephones.
How old do telephone exchanges work?
Back at the exchange, calls were connected by an operator using a cord with a plug at each end. As a caller rang in, a small metal plate (“shutter” ) would drop, revealing the caller’s number. The operator would take one end of a cord and plug it into a socket (jack) corresponding to their number.
Who invented telephone exchange?
Tivadar PuskásTelephone exchange / Inventor
One of the first to propose a telephone exchange was Hungarian Tivadar Puskás in 1877 while he was working for Thomas Edison. The first experimental telephone exchange was based on the ideas of Puskás, and it was built by the Bell Telephone Company in Boston in 1877.
When did phone operators stop UK?
In 1975 the last manual exchange in England, at Abingdon in Oxfordshire, ended its service, while one year later the very last manual exchange in the whole of the UK, at Portree on the Isle of Skye in Scotland, finished working. By 1979 the STD system was completed.